Just some further clarification. 3TB is the max size we can upgrade too without buying specially prepared drives from Weakness.com. Weakness has single 4TB and dual 4TB (8TB total) drive upgrade solutions.

Good grief, $225-ish for the special formatting? Ouch! It’s odd that the TiVo is ok with a TB 2.7TB drive but not a 3.6TB drive. I thought most of the controller and formatting issues were at the 2TB barrier. I wonder what would happen if you got bit for bit copy of their 3.6TB drive and applied it to another drive. I’m sure that is what they are doing anyway.

So get something like a WD 2.7TB Red NAS Hard Drive with a 3 year warranty and 24/7 support for $135 delivered or pay $350 (free shipping, gee thanks) for a 3.6TB drive? Hmm…

Also, the old boot CD that copied the original TiVo drive to a new bigger one no longer works?

I am about to go from FIOS with a CISCO DVR (Hate it) with ~2TB of disk to a my first TiVo, a new ROAMIO on FIOS. I want to max out the disk space so I get something that will last me the next few years. After reading this thread and looking at the weaKnees web site I think that the "Seagate Video 3.5 HDD 4TB ST4000VM000" is the largest option available. The 4tb drive can be found for less than $200 on Amazon and other places. WeaKnees seems to think this drive will work both internally and externally so I could order a second external drive when the first internal one fills up.

The process sounds simple enough.
1. Buy a Roamio Plus (plus a TiVo warranty, lifetime TiVo subscription, & FIOS cable card)
2. Throw out the small drive in the Plus and replace with the new 4TB large drive.
3. Cross fingers, power up the Roamio Plus, and activate via the welcome screens.
4. Pay the large visa bill

I am planning to buy it when the black Friday adds are out so I can shop for the best deal. Other than being a little iffy on the TIVO warranty with a non-standard drive in the Roamio, am I missing something? Has anyone put this drive in a Roamio with any success?

Wow, Glad I asked the question. Obviously, 4TB drives are not a do it yourself kind of project. That leaves me with the following options:

1) Start with a TiVo Plus. Then Pay $349 for weaKnees to provide a single internal 4TB drive or $699 for weaKnees to provide dual (internal & external) 4TB drives.

2) Start with a Tivo Plus. Then replace internal drive with a $138 3TB (WD 3TB AV-GP WD30EURS) internal drive (or just go Pro w/ 3TB internal) and then add an external $138 3TB drive (WD 3TB AV-GP WD30EURS). This would get me to 6TB of space for a lot less cost than the first 8TB option. Note: using Amazon.com price here.

Note: I already have an external WD 3TB AV-GP WD30EURS attached to my FIOS/CISCO DVR that could be reused here. The CISCO DVR only recognized and used 1TB of the 3TB in the external drive.

I have seen comments that the TiVo Roameo will ONLY work with the TiVo "approved" 1TB external drive (TiVo Expandable storage option) or with the specially prepared WeaKnees external drives (2TB, 3TB & 4TB).

Is this true about limited choices for adding external storage? Or can I use a normal drive like the 3TB WD AV-GP WD30EURS when it is properly housed in an external enclosure and uses the proper eSATA cable?

I have seen comments that the TiVo Roameo will ONLY work with the TiVo "approved" 1TB external drive (TiVo Expandable storage option) or with the specially prepared WeaKnees external drives (2TB, 3TB & 4TB).

Is this true about limited choices for adding external storage? Or can I use a normal drive like the 3TB WD AV-GP WD30EURS when it is properly housed in an external enclosure and uses the proper eSATA cable?

Yes, it is true you have limited options for external drives.

The only TiVo which allowed you to attach any drive you wanted to the eSATA port was the original Series 3 (with OLED display). Starting with the TiVo HD and continuing on with the Premier and Roamio you have to use approved drives.

I would not add an external drive until you actually need it. It just introduces an extra point of failure. (Due to some silly CableLabs rules, TiVo must split all recordings across both internal and external drives. This means that if EITHER drive fails, you lose all recordings on both.)

You stumbled into a Roamio thread, where the hardware is zip-zapity-fast.

That leads me to another question.

How fast is the Roamio (or a specific one if it matters based on model) from power up to actually recording? (No need to repeat -- everything should be on a UPS, blah blah blah.. But there ARE bugs that cause reboots even with UPSes, and admittedly, I am more likely to DELETE an incomplete recording than watch it, but if it was fast enough to happen during a commercial break, that could be a lucky fluke.. I think the Premiere 4 *almost* makes that time.. It's starting recording quite a bit before it actually starts reacting to user remote input -- it puts up the spinny wait thing for a while, but it's already recording.)

(Also, a totally unrealistic idea would be swapping drives for more storage.. I know that unsyncs cable cards.)

How fast is the Roamio (or a specific one if it matters based on model) from power up to actually recording? (No need to repeat -- everything should be on a UPS, blah blah blah.. But there ARE bugs that cause reboots even with UPSes, and admittedly, I am more likely to DELETE an incomplete recording than watch it, but if it was fast enough to happen during a commercial break, that could be a lucky fluke.. I think the Premiere 4 *almost* makes that time.. It's starting recording quite a bit before it actually starts reacting to user remote input -- it puts up the spinny wait thing for a while, but it's already recording.)

(Also, a totally unrealistic idea would be swapping drives for more storage.. I know that unsyncs cable cards.)

It's not that fast. It still takes several minutes for it to come back up to start recording again. Around 5 minutes. But it could be a little quicker or slower then that. I'm only basing this on the one unexpected reboot I had, so I just looked at when the recordings ended and started back up. But it was only whole minutes I looked at, not seconds.

I've purchased a roamio plus for christmas for my parents. I also have my older XL4 and i'm going to take the 2TB HD from there and drop it in my parents roamio. now I know the upgrade is simple. My question is when I format the the HD from the XL4 is there any special formatting? should I just do the good old NTFS or leave it unallocated?

I previously purchased a roamio for myself and bought a 3TB drive and just dropped it in, so i don't know how the drives comes formatted in the box.

I am about to go from FIOS with a CISCO DVR (Hate it) with ~2TB of disk to a my first TiVo, a new ROAMIO on FIOS. I want to max out the disk space so I get something that will last me the next few years. After reading this thread and looking at the weaKnees web site I think that the "Seagate Video 3.5 HDD 4TB ST4000VM000" is the largest option available. The 4tb drive can be found for less than $200 on Amazon and other places. WeaKnees seems to think this drive will work both internally and externally so I could order a second external drive when the first internal one fills up.

The process sounds simple enough.
1. Buy a Roamio Plus (plus a TiVo warranty, lifetime TiVo subscription, & FIOS cable card)
2. Throw out the small drive in the Plus and replace with the new 4TB large drive.
3. Cross fingers, power up the Roamio Plus, and activate via the welcome screens.
4. Pay the large visa bill

I am planning to buy it when the black Friday adds are out so I can shop for the best deal. Other than being a little iffy on the TIVO warranty with a non-standard drive in the Roamio, am I missing something? Has anyone put this drive in a Roamio with any success?

I'm reading that adding a new bigger internal drive will void the warranty. How exactly will Tivo know that it's been tampered with? Is there a VOID sticker or whatnot that you have to tamper with to open the unit? Assuming there's not, if I keep the original drive intact and I have a problem with the Roamio, couldn't I just stick the original drive back in before I ship off my defective unit to Tivo?

Has anyone had a warranty claim on a defective Tivo that contained a previously upgraded hard drive?

Does anyone know if the Roamio is capable of achieving SATA 6GB/s speeds?
I want to upgrade the HD and need to know if I should get an HD with an SATA II or SATA III interface.
I would be willing to pay the extra money for the SATA 6GB/s speed drives (Ex. WD AV-GP EURX [6GB/s] over EURS [3GB/s]) but I can't seem to find any information that states if the Roamio is capable of attaining those speeds. ...

Some of the Roamios come with WD drives. right? Which 3 TB WD drives does TiVo use in the Pro? That might give you a clue.

__________________
Roamio Plus, Four HDs, Two DTs, One S2. (Yeah, I have a TiVo 'problem.') Mac Nut too.

On what basis? It's not like you said WHY, just "don't", without a single reason for saying so.

Unless the price difference is negligible, or it's for a longer warranty, it's not a necessity. It's been determined, many times, over and over, that TiVo doesn't use the ATA Streaming Command Extensions, on ANY existing TiVo model.

That's what makes an AV drive an "AV rated" drive. You will NOT gain any extra performance (in a TiVo, or any other device not using the extensions), nor does the "24/7 rating", which is simply a badge, mean anything other than clever marketing tactics, so the drive manufacturers can make more money.

ALL modern drives are capable and tested to operate 24/7. They simply don't place that badge on anything but their higher profit-margin models.

An AV-rated drive behaves NO DIFFERENTLY than an otherwise identical drive, unless the host and the host software support, and enable, those extensions.

It's also not like you'd be denied a warranty claim, for using a non-AV drive, should it fail, within warranty.

These are cold, hard, facts. Dig around the whitepapers (spec sheets), beyond the marketing pages, make some use of Google and Wikipedia, avoiding anything from the likes of Weaknees and others that make misleading claims about the matter, and you will find I am speaking the truth.

It's also worth noting, that WD Red NAS drives also support the AV extensions, which never used to be in their marketing, but is now. All they had to do was set the firmware of the drive to not disable that function (if it was ever disabled in the first place).

The drive makers have caught on to the CPU marketing scheme, of making equal processors, then disabling some features, to sell at lower prices. If you don't need and/or can't make use of the disabled feature(s), why pay more to have them?

That's my opinion, based on facts, and I'm sticking to it. Period.

[EDIT/ADD] I've read every post in this thread, as I've been following it since it began. There are plenty of success stories with non-AV drives, just like it has been with every TiVo model HDD upgrade thread before it. The ONLY major difference has been the major drop in price for AV-rated drives, which brings it to a point where the cost difference is sometimes negligible, and/or it is just worth it to get a longer drive warranty. So, unlike past model TiVo threads, more have gone for AV drives, right from the start.

Some were initially concerned about the "Intellipark issue", that required a setting to be changed on a non-AV drive in prior generations of TiVos, which has since been confirmed to be absent in the Roamio, and no changes necessary (unless you want to change the acoustic management setting).

Which leads me to a VALID reason why some may NOT want to use some of the non-AV drives: They may be louder than an AV drive, and not all models allow you to adjust the acoustic management setting.

If you would have said this, or any other valid reason, in your post, I'd have left it alone, and this post wouldn't be here.
[END EDIT/ADD]

__________________As of 03/13/15I'm going to put all things TCF on ice, or back-burner, for now (could wind up being for the foreseeable future).
I may still post from time to time, until it's just not possible, at all, and might not be able to follow-up/through with posts/PMs.
My time/focus needs to be elsewhere. PMs welcomed, but responses not guaranteed. In need of a miracle.

I'm reading that adding a new bigger internal drive will void the warranty. How exactly will Tivo know that it's been tampered with? Is there a VOID sticker or whatnot that you have to tamper with to open the unit? Assuming there's not, if I keep the original drive intact and I have a problem with the Roamio, couldn't I just stick the original drive back in before I ship off my defective unit to Tivo?

Has anyone had a warranty claim on a defective Tivo that contained a previously upgraded hard drive?

Any TiVo has internal logs that include the model and serial number of the drive in use, and are uploaded to, and stored by, TiVo's servers. How long they are stored, or if they have a system to detect drive changes, I don't know.

Here's what has been reported (some more than others, not in a particular order):

1. Somebody bragged to TiVo that they upgraded, and were denied warranty.

2. Somebody called in for support, the CSR pulled up the logs, and noticed the drive discrepancy, denying the warranty service the customer needed.

3. I, myself, upgraded, using the same model they did in their more expensive units, and was denied SUPPORT, when they noticed the drive had been changed, due to "unauthorized modifications".

4. Others have not had an issue with SUPPORT service, which is likely due to whether or not the CSR that took the call was being vigilant about looking for drive upgrades (or what kind of day they were having).

Many have claimed the best thing to do is hang onto your original drive (don't re-purpose it), and if you need warranty service, put it back in, and you'll be fine. I can't recall anybody actually *recently* claiming this was a success story, only implying it. I could be wrong, or have forgotten such a post.

Many have also claimed that TiVo has been turning a blind-eye to the above method, but said (quite accurately) there is no guarantee that TiVo will continue to do so.

It's a gamble. Some would rather pay extra, and have peace of mind. Others don't care, or are willing to take their chances.

No, there is no sticker, nor any tamper evidence sensors. But, if TiVo has any evidence you have even opened the case, they can deny warranty service. Some have said this is against certain governmental law(s). But, I've yet to read about anybody making a case to prove it.

__________________As of 03/13/15I'm going to put all things TCF on ice, or back-burner, for now (could wind up being for the foreseeable future).
I may still post from time to time, until it's just not possible, at all, and might not be able to follow-up/through with posts/PMs.
My time/focus needs to be elsewhere. PMs welcomed, but responses not guaranteed. In need of a miracle.

Does anyone know if the Roamio is capable of achieving SATA 6GB/s speeds?
I want to upgrade the HD and need to know if I should get an HD with an SATA II or SATA III interface.
<snip>

The DRIVES that TiVo uses are currently SATA2. If SATA3 becomes available to TiVo for the same price, or the price of the SATA2 drives goes higher, they'll likely move to SATA3. But, read on for the important parts:

It's likely that the actual speed the TiVo is set to communicate with the drive is closer to SATA1. If the HOST device sets the speed to lower than the DRIVE supports as its maximum, that's as fast as it will communicate. The drive won't override the host.

SATA3 is fully backwards compatible, so it will work. But, unless the price is right, there's no point in going SATA3.

As a matter of fact, the SATA3 spec is faster than most high-performance platter-based drives can even get close to. TiVo uses low-performance, low-RPM, "green" drives, that many consider it a joke that the drive manufacturers even equipped them with SATA3. It's that "marketing" thing, again. People with the money to burn, who don't know better, will buy the higher SATA3 spec drive.

__________________As of 03/13/15I'm going to put all things TCF on ice, or back-burner, for now (could wind up being for the foreseeable future).
I may still post from time to time, until it's just not possible, at all, and might not be able to follow-up/through with posts/PMs.
My time/focus needs to be elsewhere. PMs welcomed, but responses not guaranteed. In need of a miracle.

Good to know for future reference. I noticed they are mixing it up using both Seagate and WD. Is it limited to one or the other? I like to be sure I provide facts, and not just what is reported by others, and appreciate that you didn't flog me for not knowing they have started using them. Really, I do.

When the TiVo HD originally came out they used SATA1, then went to SATA2 (I bought two of the first batch made and two of the last ever made).

The Premieres came with SATA2 from the start, and I can attest that the TiVo HD & Premiere both emulate IDE ATA133, regardless of the drive (if you know when to watch the logs, and where to look, it is logged what modes the TiVo sets, as well as the block sizes).

As for the Roamio, I have it from a reliable source, that it appears TiVo still hasn't found it necessary to change this, but nothing concrete on if they've moved beyond IDE ATA133 emulation, as the mode the TiVo sets. I'm not in-the-know enough to know how hard, or easy, it would be for them to change it. I figure if it's hard, and they don't need to, they won't do it. I'd love to hear from somebody who can shed any light on this (if TiVo has changed the mode/emulation).

I'm pretty sure it's purely a matter of what they can get (due to availability/supply/pre-allocation) and at what price, at the time. I used to work for a system builder, so I know how the game works, with drives that are in high demand (even if all that demand is one giant company).

I wouldn't be surprised if they install SATA2 drives in on Tuesdays, and SATA3 on Wednesdays, etc.

Anyway, the takeaway from all this, that matters, is that nobody should expect any performance gain, in a Roamio, by using SATA3, nor should they expect any loss of performance by using SATA2. No worries about using either.

__________________As of 03/13/15I'm going to put all things TCF on ice, or back-burner, for now (could wind up being for the foreseeable future).
I may still post from time to time, until it's just not possible, at all, and might not be able to follow-up/through with posts/PMs.
My time/focus needs to be elsewhere. PMs welcomed, but responses not guaranteed. In need of a miracle.

Tivo's warranty is only worth using for the first 90 days; after that any extended warranty is cheaper than what Tivo will charge you for a replacement unit.

So if one plans to upgrade DIY, they should buy an "extended warranty" (even the one Tivo sells is serviced by a third party) and if anything goes wrong reinstall the original drive and contact the 3rd party "extended warranty" provider for replacement.

Tivo's not involved in any part of that process, since you're not asking to use their warranty.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nooneuknow

Any TiVo has internal logs that include the model and serial number of the drive in use, and are uploaded to, and stored by, TiVo's servers. How long they are stored, or if they have a system to detect drive changes, I don't know.

Here's what has been reported (some more than others, not in a particular order):

1. Somebody bragged to TiVo that they upgraded, and were denied warranty.

2. Somebody called in for support, the CSR pulled up the logs, and noticed the drive discrepancy, denying the warranty service the customer needed.

3. I, myself, upgraded, using the same model they did in their more expensive units, and was denied SUPPORT, when they noticed the drive had been changed, due to "unauthorized modifications".

4. Others have not had an issue with SUPPORT service, which is likely due to whether or not the CSR that took the call was being vigilant about looking for drive upgrades (or what kind of day they were having).

Many have claimed the best thing to do is hang onto your original drive (don't re-purpose it), and if you need warranty service, put it back in, and you'll be fine. I can't recall anybody actually *recently* claiming this was a success story, only implying it. I could be wrong, or have forgotten such a post.

Many have also claimed that TiVo has been turning a blind-eye to the above method, but said (quite accurately) there is no guarantee that TiVo will continue to do so.

It's a gamble. Some would rather pay extra, and have peace of mind. Others don't care, or are willing to take their chances.

No, there is no sticker, nor any tamper evidence sensors. But, if TiVo has any evidence you have even opened the case, they can deny warranty service. Some have said this is against certain governmental law(s). But, I've yet to read about anybody making a case to prove it.

Tivo's warranty is only worth using for the first 90 days; after that any extended warranty is cheaper than what Tivo will charge you for a replacement unit.

So if one plans to upgrade DIY, they should buy an "extended warranty" (even the one Tivo sells is serviced by a third party) and if anything goes wrong reinstall the original drive and contact the 3rd party "extended warranty" provider for replacement.

Tivo's not involved in any part of that process, since you're not asking to use their warranty.

So I should keep the original drive in until 90 days (in case something goes horribly wrong) and then I can swap it out for the expanded one? I see the Tivo extended warranty is $40 for 3 years which sounds fair. I plan on doing the lifetime subscription, and so I guess this is my best bet as opposed to using a third party like SquareTrade?

Tivo's warranty is only worth using for the first 90 days; after that any extended warranty is cheaper than what Tivo will charge you for a replacement unit.

So if one plans to upgrade DIY, they should buy an "extended warranty" (even the one Tivo sells is serviced by a third party) and if anything goes wrong reinstall the original drive and contact the 3rd party "extended warranty" provider for replacement.

Tivo's not involved in any part of that process, since you're not asking to use their warranty.

This isn't an argument that I am presenting, just some details I feel shouldn't be left out:

As I attempted to make clear in my post, regardless of 3rd-party warranties (and perhaps making a mistake by neglecting to mention them), you still have to get support services from TiVo, if you need it. I don't know of any 3rd-party warranties that take over the support role that TiVo plays. Any I am aware of, only handle warranty claims. A 3rd-party warranty provider generally only asks why you consider the product defective, in order to justify authorizing the return for replacement. That is not the same as providing support.

While there are plenty of cases, with other products (not TiVo), where the 3rd-party also takes on the responsibilities of providing support, I have yet to come across any mention of this for TiVo. I think this is by TiVo's design.

TiVo can, and sometimes will, refuse to provide support to you, open support tickets, or even take bug reports, if they notice you have changed drives. If the problem you are having is due to a TiVo design flaw, or software bug, a replacement under 3rd-party warranty will not resolve such an issue, just provide you another TiVo, with the same flaws/bugs. This is why having TiVo continue to provide you with support services is so important. TiVo doesn't stop supporting you, just because their own 90-day, or their own extended warranty, ends.

No arguments over that the extended warranty from TiVo, is very likely handled by a 3rd-party, only uncertainty on how much the involved companies share with each other, if any. After all, When you call TiVo support, you are dealing with a 3rd-party company. Do we know for sure TiVo's own 3rd-party support company has no ties to TiVo's choice for their 3rd-party extended warranty company? It could just two differently named service providers, who could both be part of the same parent company and, theoretically, share information. I can't prove it, nor disprove it, at the moment.

Also, I've seen many other challenges to the way of thinking you describe, spread throughout various threads. I'm not going to challenge it, in any other ways, myself, as it always winds up turning into bickering back and forth, until everybody just drops the matter, so the threads the debating was going on in could return to their normal intended purpose.

This post is intentionally simplified, for the sake of brevity. I just felt it was worth bringing up the otherwise left-out, matter of insuring continued support, from TiVo, when discussing warranties and drive upgrades.

__________________As of 03/13/15I'm going to put all things TCF on ice, or back-burner, for now (could wind up being for the foreseeable future).
I may still post from time to time, until it's just not possible, at all, and might not be able to follow-up/through with posts/PMs.
My time/focus needs to be elsewhere. PMs welcomed, but responses not guaranteed. In need of a miracle.

Last edited by nooneuknow; 11-16-2013 at 09:20 PM..
Reason: clarifications

I'm reading that adding a new bigger internal drive will void the warranty. How exactly will Tivo know that it's been tampered with? Is there a VOID sticker or whatnot that you have to tamper with to open the unit? Assuming there's not, if I keep the original drive intact and I have a problem with the Roamio, couldn't I just stick the original drive back in before I ship off my defective unit to Tivo?

Has anyone had a warranty claim on a defective Tivo that contained a previously upgraded hard drive?

Yes. One of the two Roamio Plus units I bought and upgraded to 3TB failed within a week due to non drive issues. I dropped the original drive back in and returned for replacement. No issue.

Yes. One of the two Roamio Plus units I bought and upgraded to 3TB failed within a week due to non drive issues. I dropped the original drive back in and returned for replacement. No issue.

When making such statements, I feel there should be an obligation to warn the inquiring party, more so the countless others that will read it, that TiVo can change this at any time, if they wish.

I consider this more of a blanket post for all, and hope you don't feel I'm trying to pick a fight, just because I quoted your post.

__________________As of 03/13/15I'm going to put all things TCF on ice, or back-burner, for now (could wind up being for the foreseeable future).
I may still post from time to time, until it's just not possible, at all, and might not be able to follow-up/through with posts/PMs.
My time/focus needs to be elsewhere. PMs welcomed, but responses not guaranteed. In need of a miracle.

Dude, I don't know what your sudden problem with me is but I'd like to get past it.

Didn't you read the last line of my last post?

I don't have a problem with you, so there's nothing to get past.

I'd have posted the same things, regardless of who the posts I referenced came from, if they had the same, or similar content.

If you still feel we have a "problem", please take it to PM. Thanks.

__________________As of 03/13/15I'm going to put all things TCF on ice, or back-burner, for now (could wind up being for the foreseeable future).
I may still post from time to time, until it's just not possible, at all, and might not be able to follow-up/through with posts/PMs.
My time/focus needs to be elsewhere. PMs welcomed, but responses not guaranteed. In need of a miracle.